


There is Tragedy Here, Too

by strqkk (sangguinne)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Tony Angst, allusions to one-sided love, i love my boy and the world is cruel to him, some sads, that one scene in ca:cw, why is that a suggested tag, you know the one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-26 19:39:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12065676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sangguinne/pseuds/strqkk
Summary: And so it goes.





	There is Tragedy Here, Too

Tony has felt all the tragedy of the world pressing down on his shoulders, rising up past his throat, his nostrils, his eyes, his ears. Heavy and suffocating like being crushed and drowned simultaneously. Almost half a century and the world is no kinder than at nine, fourteen, twenty-five, or forty. Sure, he has rocket propellers on his feet and a second skin of nickel-titanium alloy, but Tony feels no stronger looking down on New York City from the sky than he does looking up at the skyscrapers from a gurney being wheeled into the back of a private ambulance. 

Or than he did staring down at the freshly turned earth of his parents’ graves, side by side; _Here Lie Our American Heroes_ ; here lies all the true love he ever received, as rough and twisted as it was. Hearts were always elusive to the boy who was iron on the inside before he was ever iron on the outside. 

It went like this: 

He was six and he loved a father who had better things to do than love him back. 

He was seventeen and he loved a best friend whose heart belonged only to a country and her ceaseless, discommodious whims. 

He was twenty-nine and he loved a woman too intelligent, too kind, too good for a damaged boy and his silly toys.

So when he was thirty-eight and his heart broke in a desert in Afghanistan, he built himself a new one made of metal and electromagnets and decided maybe to save the world instead of himself. 

It goes like this: 

His world is different from his father’s, but not by much. There are monsters to fight and people to save, and the lines between the two are as blurred as they ever were. Perhaps there are more superhumans on both sides, perhaps their little rock in the galaxy isn’t the only battlefield, but they’re the same battles fundamentally. People will cry and grieve and blame. And like a true Stark, Tony will build and fight and grin.

(And also maybe cry and grieve and blame).

(Perhaps this is where the true distinction lies).

The surname lifts him up and weighs him down and maybe tears him apart in the contrary courses but it's no big deal; he’s a Stark, he can handle it. A wrench, a blowtorch, and hours by himself when time slips through his fingers like forgotten dates and missed meetings and all the human connections he could be making. There’s a whole world outside this heavily secured bunker of a home he has locked himself within that runs on gossip and rumours about _“Tony Stark: that puerile bastard who bought himself an undeserved spot amongst the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes”_.

There are universes of dark corners and banging doors inside his own mind, and a sadistic inner voice ready to lend him a hand on an audio-guided tour through his deepest, darkest nightmares (or a woman in New York with eyes like mist off an ocean ready to do the same). If he closes his eyes he sees neon red; or an army of spaceships amongst that infinity of stars; or a darkness so empty it heaves him towards itself like a chunk of space debris towards a red supergiant.

So he keeps his eyes open and his hands busy. 

Howard Stark did more for America than Tony Stark ever will, and every time the light catching off that shield glints in his periphery he feels like throwing up. Even now- now, _now_ \- after everything, after distrust turned to reluctant alliance turned to back-to-back on a battlefield, he can’t look that boy in the eye and not see the only gift his father ever placed in his hands personally: an action figure from 1945, a blue and white cowl and a painted smile. _A hero_ , his father had said, looking not at his son but at the plastic doll forever frozen in a fearless grin, _the bravest man to ever live_.

__

__

_A hero_ , Tony thinks, gazing at the boy sat at the windowsill, sketching into a book on his lap. The late afternoon sun casts him in muted golds and yellows like a sepia photograph, something faded and worn. _The bravest man to ever live_. 

So when those same eyes are glimmering and anguished above him, obscured by the blood and darkness creeping at the edges of Tony’s vision, he can think enough through the pain to appreciate the inevitability of this particular battle. They are both his father’s creation, and it only makes sense that one should destroy the other. 

It’s been a long time coming when that star-spangled shield slices into and shatters his new heart. 

Tony Stark lies numb and bleeding out on the cold, cold ground. There is tragedy here, like everywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always sad about Tony Stark.


End file.
